(Reporter Lu Zhen) The "sharing economy" is more popular in these years. No, telecom operators have also turned on the "sharing" mode. Since 2019, China Telecom and China Unicom have fully launched the co-construction and sharing of 5G networks.
At present, China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly solved the problem of 5G co-construction and sharing, and have embarked on an innovative road.
Co-construction and sharing to create a new pattern of 5G development
In the information age, how to build a high-quality 5G network efficiently and cost-effectively has become the primary problem for operators to develop.
On September 9, 2019, China Telecom and China Unicom signed the "Framework Cooperation Agreement on 5G Network Co-construction and Sharing", agreeing to jointly build and share a 5G boutique network in the whole life cycle of 5G and the whole network.
At the 2022 Mobile World Congress, Li Zhengmao, general manager of China Telecom, said that by the end of January 2022, China Telecom and China Unicom will deploy and share 700,000 5G base stations. It has to be said that through joint efforts, the two sides have formed 5G network coverage capabilities in the shortest time and at the lowest cost.
Since China Telecom and China Unicom opened the 5G co-construction and sharing model in 2019, they have jointly solved a series of problems and challenges such as the research and development of large-bandwidth and high-power devices, ultra-large-scale networking and operation of 5G access networks, and the two sides have made major breakthroughs in 5G sharing technology, devices, equipment, networking, and operation.
It is not difficult to speculate that in the future, China Telecom and China Unicom will promote the formation of a new 5G development pattern with faster construction speed, higher resource efficiency, better service quality and better competition and cooperation order.
5G co-construction and sharing to help social digital upgrading
China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared through 5G, which has effectively reduced construction investment and maintenance costs, avoided duplicate construction of sites, saved sky space, power energy, and site resources, and doubled the scale, coverage, bandwidth, and speed of 5G networks.
In Chongqing, China Telecom Chongqing Company and China Unicom Chongqing Company jointly built a 4/5G network for the first phase of Metro Line 9 over a period of 95 days. At present, the average download rate of 4/5G network users on Metro Line 9 is 575Mbps, and the peak can reach 723Mbps, which greatly meets the needs of the general public rail transit Internet experience.
In Hebei, under the guidance of the innovative model of co-construction, sharing and co-maintenance, China Telecom Baoding Branch and China Unicom Baoding Branch built the Spring Community into the first FTTH co-construction and sharing co-maintenance demonstration community, and estimated that the construction investment cost would be saved by 54% after completion, covering 13,000 households.
In addition, China Telecom and China Unicom also launched a jointly developed and independently developed blockchain scheduling platform last year, which is the first cross-operator 5G operation scheduling system based on blockchain, which realizes blockchain cross-cloud interconnection and network governance, and provides a new solution for efficient management and operation of shared networks.
How to continue to innovate in 5G co-construction and sharing?
In the digital era, China Telecom and China Unicom have opened the innovation road of 5G co-construction and sharing, and have achieved remarkable results, but they also face many challenges.
The first is in network management. China Telecom and China Unicom are both operators with a user volume of 100 million, and there are differences in their respective network resources, planning objectives, construction processes, etc., and how to "seek common ground while reserving differences" in the process of co-construction and sharing has become the first problem that both sides need to solve.
Second, in terms of network operation, the two sides are also faced with the problem of how to efficiently coordinate network and other resources under the shared network, dispatch it fairly and ensure mutual trust.
Third, in terms of network technology, the co-construction and sharing of 5G networks needs to meet the needs of the customers of the two operators at the same time, so how to coordinate technical standards, network evolution, and user strategies also requires technical research.